


Fade to White

by dance_across



Category: due South
Genre: Everyone is Bisexual, F/M, Flashbacks, Fortitude Pass, Missing Scene, POV Second Person, POV Victoria, Submissive Fraser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:39:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4577343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_across/pseuds/dance_across
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the show, there's Sarah McLachlan and a tasteful fade-to-black. In this fic, there is neither.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fade to White

He didn’t even kiss you.

As you stand in the lobby of your hotel, watching him head back down the street toward that sad little apartment of his, you’re paralyzed with the thought that this could be it. This could be the end. You had a perfectly nice, perfectly passionless evening with him, sitting in front of that stupid soundless television as his wolf played chaperone, and now you might never see him again. Not like this, anyway – not one on one, woman to man, person to person, before he finds out about the cabin and the ten grand and… and with so many things unsaid.

And he didn’t even kiss you.

He didn’t even _try._

“Are you all right, ma’am?” asks someone wearing the hotel uniform.

You nod.

“You don’t look so great,” the man insists. A boy, now that you’re really looking at him. “Can I get you some water? Maybe something to eat?”

“I’ve already…”

You trail off. You _have_ already eaten. You cooked a meal with him. You ate it together. You left the dishes unwashed in his sink, with—

With your prints all over them.

Fuck.

“I have to go,” you tell the uniformed boy, and you’re out the door before he can reply.

 _Fingerprints_ , you keep telling yourself, clinging to logic as you retrace your steps back to his building. But you know it’s not about that. Not even close. You walk faster and faster, memories and accusations and long-buried venom rising to the surface as you jimmy the front door open, as you climb the stairs, as you raise your fist to knock on his door.

You knock three times. Then four more times, all in quick succession, so he knows you mean business.

And then the door opens, and there he is. Blue jeans, plain shirt, big eyes. He looks surprised to see you again – though not as surprised as you thought he’d look. He doesn’t say anything. Just waits.

So you speak first.

“Did you think we could just pretend that it didn't happen?”

He knows what _it_ is. Obviously he does. His eyes close, and as he drops his gaze from yours, his lips twitch, like he wants to say something, but knows he shouldn’t. Like he knows this is your moment, not his. Somehow, his silence riles you up even more.

“How could you do it?” you ask, and his head snaps up again. There’s an answer in his eyes, but you aren’t ready to hear it, not yet. “How could you _do_ that to me, huh?”

You push him to punctuate the question, a satisfying press of hands against hard flesh. He lets himself be pushed. His back is against the wall now, arms loose at his sides, like he’s waiting to see what you’ll do next. It only lasts a moment, though, before he’s moving back toward you, hands reaching, and you know you only have seconds before your purpose, your anger, is lost in everything else you feel for him. You ask the question one more time – “How could you do it?” – and the words catch against your teeth as you shove at his chest.

But then his arms are around you, and he’s so warm, so solid, so sure, and you don’t know any more if you want an answer, or if you just want…

“No,” you say to him, pounding on his shoulder, clutching at the thick fabric of his shirt. No to what, though?

No, if anything, to what he did ten years ago. Not to anything that’s happening right now. His arms around you, his breath against your neck, the look of contrition on his face – that’s all yes, yes, yes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and that’s it. That’s the only answer there is, and you know it. You _know_ why he did what he did. Because of duty or honor or something – because after everything he shared with you as you lay dying together in the snow, he still chose to be a cop instead of a person. A robot instead of a man.

But you _know_ there’s a person under the uniform and the rank and the always-get-your-man Mountie bullshit. For the space of a week, you knew him as well as you know yourself – his cracked voice, his chapped lips, the calm strength in his eyes as you admitted to each other that you were probably going to die. You knew him, and you’ve lost him.

Now, you are going to find him again.

Your hand skims the back of his neck and makes a fist in his hair, but softly, softly. He holds you tighter, burying his face between your coat and your neck. He inhales, and the sound of it sends lightning through your body. The kind of lightning you were too weak to feel ten years ago.

His breath moves from your neck to your mouth, and you kiss him, or he kisses you, or maybe neither of you actually do it and it just _happens_ , all on its own. Because it was meant to happen. Your body presses into his: a warmer, stronger echo of the last night you spent beside him.

His lips grow hungry.

Yours grow hungrier.

He slams the apartment door shut.

His hands are in your hair, and yours are in his, and you kiss and kiss and kiss and somehow you pull yourself away long enough to take off your coat.

“Remember when,” you whisper into his mouth. There are a thousand different possible endings to that sentence.

“Yes,” he replies. “I wanted…”

You wait to hear the end. But instead of speaking, he leans his forehead against yours, using both hands to hold your face steady. His eyes are closed, brows drawn together almost like he’s in pain.

You understand very clearly what he wanted.

You wanted it, too.

“You could have had it,” you reply.

“I know,” he says, and then he’s kissing you again, murmuring, “I know, I’m so sorry, I know,” into your mouth.

He moves you away from the front door, toward the bed, but it’s you who backs him up until his shins hit the bedframe. The impact throws him, and you take advantage of his momentary disorientation to push him backwards – _shove_ him backwards. His head hits the pillow, and you fall on top of him, and he’s pinned between you and the mattress; he sucks in a breath, obviously surprised.

“I’m sorry,” you say, without knowing why you’re saying it. You aren’t sorry. Not for pushing him, not for the surprise on his face, not even for his cabin up north that you—

 _No_. You won’t think about that now. You won’t.

“That’s all right,” he says, smiling as he tries and fails to tuck your hair behind your ear. “I probably deserve it.”

“You do,” is your reply.

It’s a joke, but it’s not, and you can tell that he knows. You bend your head down, and as you kiss him again, his hand finds yours. His left hand, your right. He caresses it – and then he breaks the kiss, turns his head, and takes your fingers into his mouth.

Your breath catches.

Your memory catches.

Just like that, you aren’t in his apartment anymore. You aren’t in Chicago. You aren’t in this year, this decade, this… you’re…

-

_Ben stopped talking hours ago._

_First it was stories, big lavish stories with beginnings and middles and ends, usually about his childhood or people he knew or this moose that almost trampled his friend or whatever._

_Then it was sentences. “Did you know this very obscure fact about snow?”_

_Then it was just_ victoria, victoria, good _until his voice gave out._

_Then, silence. Just his breath against your face. His eyelids, fluttering open and fluttering closed again. You don’t talk either, and your eyelids flutter too. You sleep._

_But when you wake up, it’s because somehow, your fingers are warm. You didn’t know warm could still happen to you. You force your eyes open. The fingers of your right hand, all of them but the thumb, are in his mouth._

_His_ mouth. __

_“Why…?” Your voice comes out broken, but at least it comes out at all._

_Ben smiles at you. The contortion of his cracked lips lets your fingers slip free, and he replies in a voice even scratchier than yours, “Bend them.”_

_You bend your fingers. It’s difficult, impossible, like trying to bend a bowling ball – but you manage._

_“Good.” God, his throat is so raw that the word is painful to hear. “Other hand. Prevents frostbite.”_

_Frostbite. Oh._

_You try to locate your other hand so you can offer it to him, but he finds it first. Pops your flimsy city-girl glove off, and sticks your fingers in his mouth like a kid with a Ring Pop._

_His eyes are wide open and bright blue, and there are snowflakes on his lashes and brows. Or tiny icicles, maybe. Despite all that, though, he looks warmer than you. You snuggle closer._

_You stay quiet. You watch the way your hand ends at the knuckles, disappearing into his mouth after. You look at the shelter he’s created for you out of nothing but his coat and that long gun. You look at it, and you look at his face. You just look._

_Then you say, “Need me to do yours?”_

_Ben’s eyes twinkle, but he doesn’t reply. Just holds up a hand, which is so huge it probably has four layers of gloves on it. Apparently this is a one-way favor._

_You force your lips into a smile._

_“In that case,” you say, slowly enough that you can make sure your tongue says all the words right, “any chance I could get you to do my toes, too?”_

-

You pull your fingers from his mouth, and as you kiss him, you bring his wrists above his head, using your hands to pin them to the mattress. You pull your head away, and he leans up, trying to follow you. You don’t let him. He blinks at you, uncomprehending, but you don’t explain. Not yet. You look at his caught hands, and you look at his face. You just look.

Then he says, “I love you.”

“I hate you,” you reply, digging the heels of your hands into the soft flesh of his wrists. Digging until you imagine his veins collapsing in on themselves, his blood pooling like a lake caught by a dam. His pupils change, and his breath is coming faster, and you can feel him hardening against your stomach. You whisper, “Run away with me.”

“Where?” he whispers back.

Mexico, obviously. Well, Austin first, because that’s where you’ll get rid of the last of those marked bills. But then Mexico. Somewhere touristy enough that nobody will question your American accent and his Canadian one, but somewhere seedy enough that fencing the diamonds won’t be a problem. You’ll take trains until you’re across the border. Then you’ll buy a car.

“Somewhere warm,” is all you tell him for now. “Somewhere with a beach. You ever been to the beach?”

“Once I saw a family of polar bears on the shore, way up north on the Beaufort,” he replies, and you can hear the effort it’s taking him to keep his voice steady. “I was quiet enough that they let me be. I watched them for hours. I was eight.”

“I mean the real beach,” you say, squeezing his wrists now, squeezing hard. “I mean swimming and surfing and” – you bend and kiss his neck and lick it too and Christ his skin tastes good and so you bite it and he sucks in a breath – “and idiots getting tans and drinks with little umbrellas in them. You ever been to one of those beaches?”

He shakes his head no, hair making the quietest _shh-shh_ across his pillow.

“I’ll take you.” You bend down to kiss him again, and you swear his mouth is hotter than before. “I haven’t been to the beach in forever, but it’s okay. We can go together. You and me, when we run away.”

“When we run away,” he echoes. This time, when he leans up to kiss you, you let him. You don’t let him sit up, but you do let him break your grip on his hands, so he can hold your face as his lips press against your cheeks, your nose, your _eyelids_ for fuck’s sake, and finally your lips again. His cock is rigid against your stomach, but his kisses are so controlled, so deliberate. You can feel how much he loves you in the difference between the two.

And if that weren’t evidence enough, he also just agreed to come away with you. You know that it’s possible he’s just playing along, or he’ll change his mind after he comes, but maybe this will really be that easy. Maybe you won’t have to use the burned-down cabin against him – maybe you won’t have to set him up and force him out of Chicago and into your arms. Maybe this time, you’ll simply ask, and he’ll say yes, and he’ll mean it, and that’ll be the end. Happily ever after.

You could have had this happily-ever-after ten years ago. You asked then. He said no. He said _no_ , the asshole, and he fucking arrested you.

“Stop,” you say into his mouth.

He stops.

“Are you all right?” he asks, all even-keeled, like he doesn’t know you can feel how hard he is for you.

You sit up, and he starts to sit up too, but you say, “No. Stay right where you are.”

His breath hitches, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips. He stays right where he is, just like you told him—and you almost laugh for a second there, because of course he’s good at following orders, of _course_ he is. Ben Fraser following orders is what led him into that blizzard after the snow forced your plane down. It’s what landed you in prison. You really should have known.

You take off his shirt and throw it on the floor. Then his undershirt. But when you get to his belt, your mind goes, absurdly, to the chaperone you had earlier.

“Where’s your wolf?” you ask, eyes scanning the room. You don’t see him anywhere.

“Diefenbaker?” he says, with the tiniest of laughs. “Hiding in the kitchen, I’d presume. He doesn’t even like to be around when I so much as…” He finishes this with a succinct hand gesture.

“Jerk off,” you finish for him.

“Mm,” he agrees, still staying right where he is, like you told him to. “I think he feels it to be an invasion of my privacy. He’s quite considerate, most of the time. I’d obviously afford him the same consideration, should the need ever arise.”

“That’s ridiculous,” you say.

“Even so. I imagine we won’t be interrupted. And there’s no need to worry about him overhearing, either. He’s deaf.”

Ridiculous, definitely, but if the wolf being prudish means you won’t have a voyeur, so much the better.

You smile.

“Hands above your head,” you tell him, just to see what he’ll do. Just to test.

He hesitates, but only for a second – then his hands move back to where they were before, on either side of his pillow. The only thing missing is you, pinning him down. But you know, now, that that’s not necessary.

He’s quiet. So quiet. He’s waiting for your next order.

As you climb off him and stand beside the bed, his eyes follow you. As you unlace your boots, his chest heaves with his efforts to control his breathing. As you reach under your skirt and begin to pull your tights off, his eyelids actually flutter closed for a second.

And his hands don’t move from above his head, even when he whispers, “Victoria, what are you doing?”

His voice is becoming softer around the edges, but his syllables are still way too precise. Your name is a crisp apple in his mouth, as shiny and red and polished-up as his stupid uniform.

You respond simply and wordlessly: by using one leg of your tights to make a knot around his left wrist. You bring the fabric up toward the head of the bed, loop it around the leg, then bring it back up and tie a knot around his other wrist.

Halfway through the process, he realizes what you’re doing, and a soft _“Oh”_ escapes him, so filled with wonder that you have to pause and lean down and kiss him. It’s only a peck on the lips, and he moans when you pull away without giving him more. But he doesn’t stop you. He just watches as you finish that final knot, securing his wrist in place.

His lips are slightly parted, and you swear his legs weren’t spread like that before. His hips weren’t so aggressively still. You’re as wet as he is hard, and you can tell he knows it, but he won’t say anything. Not because he’s polite – not this time – but because he knows the first move is yours to make.

His chest is heaving silently, up and down, up and down, and you have never wanted anyone this badly, not in your entire life. He’s even more beautiful than you remember, and he’s sorry, and he loves you, and you want to make him writhe with pleasure, and you want to watch his face open up as he comes, and you want him to say your name until he doesn’t sound like Constablebentonfraser anymore, until he sounds like a man.

Like your Ben.

You reach down and undo the buckle on his belt, slide it out, and toss it away. You unbutton his jeans and unzip his fly, and his face contorts with the shifting pressure against his cock. When you brush your fingernail against the head, through the fabric of his white shorts, he bites his lip and moans. You take off your clothes and discard them, watching his eyes darken like storm clouds gathering.

“I love you,” he says again, his voice thick with desire.

“Fuck you, Ben,” you reply, and his name tastes like melting ice as you climb atop him and lean over to kiss him again.

-

_The universe is a snowglobe in reverse. All the snow is on the outside, and on the inside it’s you and Constable Benton Fraser, huddled together in the stillness, waiting for someone to come along and shake you up so that all your parts will swirl around and around and land wherever they want._

_“Victoria,” says Constable Benton Fraser, shaking the globe. His voice sets loose the staccato syllables of your name, and they swirl and fly and land in a different order than before. You feel queasy. You have to pee. You force your eyes open and you look at him and he looks worried. “Victoria?”_

_Then he sees you looking. He smiles, tentative._

_“Victoria,” he says, and your name rearranges itself back into what it was before. You smile back at him, and he says, “Good.”_

_This has been going on for hours. Or days. Or since the world began, or at least since he lost the energy to say more than just those two words. Your eyes flutter closed, and the snowglobe settles, and you drift and drift, and then Constable Benton Fraser says, “Victoria, Victoria, Victoria,” until you look and he sees you looking, and then he says, “Good.”_

_Settle, shake, repeat._

_You begin measuring time in_ victoria, victoria, good. __

 _After the forty-seventh cycle, you begin to get annoyed. He says all those name-syllables until you open your eyes, but before he can say_ good _, you say, “Constablebentonfraser.”_

_He looks alarmed. Maybe because all the consonants of his name are slurring together in your mouth, a pile of slush instead of a flurry of snowflakes._

_You try again. “Constablebentonfraser. Constablebentonfraser.” He blinks and blinks, and then he smiles at you. You say, “Good.”_

_His laugh is a silent puff of freezing air. For a second he pulls you closer, an extra layer of hug within the hug you’re already sharing. “It’s Ben,” he tells you._

_“Ben,” you repeat. The name is round and intimate and so much easier to say._

_He nods. “Good.”_

-

You kiss his lips and his neck, then you move downward, flicking one nipple with your tongue, then the other. You scoot your ass back, leaving a trail of wetness down his stomach, until you can feel his erect cock, still covered in fabric, against the base of your spine. You let yourself sit heavy on his belly; he can take your weight.

“Victoria,” he says, still too crisp and precise, as your tongue swirls around his left nipple. “Victoria…”

You replace tongue with teeth, and he gasps, “Oh!” And, yeah, that’s more like it. Next time, you bite harder.

“Good?” you whisper.

“Good,” he whispers back, and you continue kissing your way down his body.

Just before you reach his cock, you climb off him, taking pleasure at the low whimper he makes when your bodies separate. But you want a good view for this part. You want to be able to see all of him at once.

Kneeling beside the bed, you draw his jeans down to his knees – then you zip and button them again so the waistband traps his legs together. Only then do you peel his shorts away, exposing his cock to the air. To you.

He’s long and fat. He’s hard, god, so fucking hard it looks painful. You touch one finger to the tiny slit at the head, and he bucks. “Vic-Victoria…”

“Yes?” you say.

“You… oh god…”

You run a finger along the crease between his torso and his thigh, making him shiver. “What would you like me to do?”

His face goes instantly, unmistakably red. “Um. I. Um.” He squeezes his eyes closed, which makes you smile. He doesn’t want to talk. He wants to do things without saying them. Cute.

“This?” you ask softly, and swipe your tongue across the slit, tasting cream and salt.

“Mmm,” he groans.

“Ben. Open your eyes and tell me what you want.”

His eyes open, and you’re near breathless at the sight of him: arms bound in your tights, chest heaving with want, face red with embarrassment, eyes fixed only on you.

“Your mouth on me,” he manages. “Please. Victoria. Please.”

“Good,” you say. “I can do that.”

You run your tongue lightly up the swollen ridge of his cock, then swipe it again over the salty tip. His ass clenches, and he moans low in his throat, and for a single second you cover the head with your mouth. Just long enough to suck some of the salt from him, to turn the volume up on that moan. Then you lick back down again, all the way to the base. He twists and moans and moans and _moans_ , and you hold his cock steady as you taste his balls, and _god_ the sounds he’s making.

You pull yourself away so you can get a glimpse of his face. His skin is beginning to glisten. His eyes are closed. His belly is rising and falling rapidly as he tries to regain his breath. Then he says:

“Teeth.”

The word comes out of him so softly that, at first, you’re sure you misheard him.

“Teeth?” you repeat.

“Mmhmm,” he growls, eyes still closed. Your hands are on his thighs, and you can feel the muscles shifting beneath his skin as he tries to stay still for you. Nobody’s ever asked you to use your teeth before. Not for this, anyway. Lightning flares inside you again, and you’re so fucking turned on that if you don’t press your legs together, you’re gonna flood the whole apartment. The whole world.

Teeth it is.

You start small: a quick nip at the loose flesh of his balls. He sucks in a breath, but he doesn’t tell you to stop. You bite softly at his shaft, at the ridge you licked before.

“God,” he says. “Yes. Oh god.”

You work your way up again, your bites becoming harder and harder, his “oh god” becoming more and more frantic, and then you close your teeth on the head of his cock and he jerks underneath you, his back arching, and “aaahahahaaa” comes out of him, and it’s either the darkest laugh or the quietest scream you’ve ever heard. Maybe both. You desperately want to hear it again.

You bite him again, and this time there’s no shape to his cry. It’s formless, uncensored sound, and it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. He’s jerking and writhing beneath your hands, his arms straining against the flimsy handcuffs you made for him, and you can tell he’s gonna go over the edge any second now.

“Don’t come yet,” you tell him. “Not till I say so.”

“God oh god oh god,” is his only reply, as your teeth and tongue work their way down his cock again and your hand strokes his belly.

This is one thing you failed to learn about him when you first met him. He likes pain. He loves it. He _asked_ for it.

You wonder if this is something new, or if he’s always been like this.

-

_Something touches your face, and at first you think it’s a wild animal, come to eat you alive. You’re grateful, almost. At least this means you won’t live long enough to starve._

_Then there’s a voice. Human voice, saying words you can’t make out. You ask the voice to repeat itself, but maybe the asking happens in your head, because no sound comes out of you. Even though your lips are moving._

_The voice says something again, higher and sharper than before. There’s a flurry of movement. Something blocks the snow. Something jostles your shoulder. It’s a hand. Covered in several layers of gloves, but undoubtedly a hand._

_You make yourself focus until you realize the hand belongs to a body, and the body belongs to a man, and the man has ice-blue eyes that are watching you._

_“Who’re you?” you rasp._

_“Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” he replies. “How long have you been here?”_

_A cop. Oh, shit._

_“You tracked me?” Your voice is coming easier, now that you’re actually using it._

_He gives a small nod. “Since they sent the alert across the border, and since your plane came down. How long have you been in this spot?” He pauses, and you think, and when you don’t answer right away he goes on: “Thirty minutes? An hour? More?”_

_“I… don’t know.”_

_“Have you lost consciousness at all? Do you have any food with you? Water?”_

_“I have. Um. Snow. I have all this snow.”_

_He laughs, but in a worried way. “Can you feel your extremities?”_

_And that’s when you find yourself thinking that you’d very much like to feel_ his _extremities. He’s pretty. Broad shoulders, good cheekbones, those blue blue eyes. You wonder if you’re hallucinating him – but come on, if you were gonna hallucinate the perfect man, wouldn’t he be, say, not a cop?_

_“Miss. Can you feel your extremities?”_

_You move your fingers and toes around, just to be sure. They creak a little, but they work. “Yes.”_

_“Good.” He looks around, brows drawn together, taking in your surroundings. Snow and mountains, mountains and snow. “Let’s endeavor to keep it that way, shall we?”_

_You think about playing innocent. About maybe not even bringing up why you’re here in the first place. But he already mentioned your plane going down, so he obviously knows who you are, and if this guy tracked you all the way into a goddamn blizzard, there’s no way you’re gonna convince him that it was someone else who drove that getaway car._

_So you cut right to the chase: “That’s how this is gonna go, is it, Constable Benton Fraser? You keep me alive and then you arrest me?”_

_The question visibly startles him. “For now, let’s just focus on keeping you alive.”_

_And he sets about creating a shelter._

-

He doesn’t come. He’s huffing and panting with the effort of it, but he either has incredible stamina or a willpower of steel. Finally, after one last nip of your teeth and one last press of your fingernail into his slit, you draw yourself away. You’re still on your knees on his floor, and you fold your arms on the sheet beside him, and lean your head on them. For one long moment, you just sit quietly and watch his face.

He’s sweating and gorgeous and trying so hard to hold himself back. You trace the curve of his ass with one finger, watching as the muscle clenches its response.

You say, “If I untie you, will you finish yourself off so I can watch?”

He bites his lip. Groans. Then, to your surprise, shakes his head.

“I’m yours,” he says shakily. “You need to do it.”

Heat flares inside you, and suddenly even the press of your nipples against his sheets is too much. You sit back on your heels, somehow managing a cool raise of your eyebrow. “Was that an order, Constable?”

He laughs, high and uneven. “A request. _Please_.”

“Please what?” you say, and there he is, looking all shy again. “Ask me for what you want, Ben.”

A pause.

“Let me come,” he whispers. “In your hand or in your mouth or in your… your…”

“My what?”

“Inside you,” he says. “Except, um. Protection. I don’t have any, um.”

“I’m on the pill,” you tell him. “And I’m clean. And I’m willing to bet you are too. Say please again. One more time.”

“Please,” he says, and that’s all it takes. In a flash you’re back on the bed and right on top of him and he didn’t ask you to untangle his legs from his jeans so you leave them as they are and you place yourself just so and you grip him with your hand and guide him toward you and he’s slick with your saliva and you’re slick with ten years of wanting him and you feel him against your clit then against your opening and it’s been so long but you’re so so ready and he

slides

right

in

and you groan from deep within yourself at the sensation of being filled, the knowledge of being filled by _him_.

You pictured him for years as you jerked off in your prison bunk. You even shouted his name a few times when you came, much to the annoyance of your neighbors. You thought of his mouth warming your fingers when you let that girl, what was her name, Sandy or Cindy or whatever, go down on you.

“Oh, him?” you said over and over again, when anyone asked who the hell _Ben_ was. “Just this cop.” You never said what kind of cop. The red uniform was yours to picture, not theirs. “He arrested me. Ruined my life.” You never told them that he saved your life first. “Pretty as fuck, though, you know? The kind of pretty you don’t forget.”

If they could see you now. Ha. Working your hips back and forth, riding him slowly at first, then faster and faster, rubbing your clit with two fingers as you watch him try and try and try not to come.

Finally, his gaze turns pleading, and this time you’ll be nice. You won’t make him ask.

“Come for me,” you say, bracing your hands on his chest. “Come on. Let go.”

And he does. He comes for you, _in_ you, with an animal cry, with an arched back, with a couple of tears leaking out of the corners of his squeezed-shut eyes.

The sight of it is enough to put you over the edge too. You rub harder at yourself from _that_ angle, _that_ one _right there_ , and all the lightning that’s been gathering inside you, it churns and roils and bursts open, and you’re right there with him, and it feels like—

-

_“We’re going to die here.”_

_When you finally say out loud what you’ve been thinking, it’s a relief. A weight off your chest. What’s less of a relief is the way Ben doesn’t even wake up at the sound of your voice. He’s been out cold for hours, and if it weren’t for his slow but steady breathing, you’d think him dead already._

_There’s no heat left. None. You’re going to freeze to death. It’s funny; when you first collapsed here, after your world faded to white and before he found you, you figured you would starve._

_The wind howls around your flimsy little bodies. You wish the wind would starve and freeze instead of you._

_“Rebuff the big wind,” you say, and where the hell did that come from? You search your memory, but there’s nothing else there. Just that one little phrase._

_No. There’s more._

_“The hurl and gliding.” Your throat is two piles of needles rubbing against each other. “My heart in hiding.”_

_Ben’s eyes open slowly, and he blinks at you in some kind of bleary wonder._

_“Blue-bleak embers,” you say, as more little phrases drop into your mind. They’re out of order, you know that much. Some poem you had to memorize for school, eons ago. You don’t know what it’s called. You don’t even remember how it begins._

_Then, suddenly, you do remember._

_“I caught this morning morning’s minion,” you say, and close your eyes, waiting. Maybe the rest will come to you._

_“Keep going,” he says._

_So you do. You keep going until your inside-out snowglobe shakes the pieces of the poem into the right order. You keep going until your throat’s so raw that nothing comes out but creaky consonants and silent vowels._

_You keep going until the snow stops and you find yourselves, miraculously, still alive._

-

—and it feels like life when you expected death.

You collapse onto his chest as your orgasm subsides, your breasts pressed flat against him as your lips find his. He kisses you softly, and you keep your hips still. He isn’t big enough to fill you anymore, not after coming as hard as he did, but you want to keep him inside you for as long as you can.

“Ben,” you say. “My Ben. I found you.”

“I love you,” he replies, and the third time’s apparently the charm because you reply with, “I love you, too.”

You even mean it, and how fucked up is that?

He smiles like a sunbeam, and for a second it’s just you and him, eyes locked, hips locked. Then, he _moves_. He’s sitting up, jerking his arms forward and down, and he doesn’t even seem to notice your tights ripping as he brings his arms around you, pulls you close, claws at your back as he kisses you so hungrily that you barely even notice his cock slipping out of you.

In one swift motion he has you flipped and pinned, your positions reversed. You wonder if he’s going to tie you like you tied him, but he doesn’t. He shucks your ruined tights from his wrists, wriggles out of his jeans, and then he’s on you again. Hands on your biceps, your shoulders, your sides. Mouth everywhere, kissing and licking and tasting and sometimes just _touching_ , as he moves slowly down your body.

You’re already sensitive from the release you just had, but as Ben’s mouth moves over you, something new begins to build on top of it. Your skin is a web of live wires, sparking wherever his lips touch: your neck, your collarbone, your nipples, the creased skin under your breasts, the expanse of your stomach, the dip of your navel. Down, down, down, until his hands are on your thighs and his nose is in your hair and his tongue is—

 _Oh_.

Oh. Yes.

The first lick is tentative. Slow. Slow enough to make you clutch the sheets with your hands, clutch your lip with your teeth. The second lick is even slower, his tongue fat and wet as it moves over you, making each separate sensation last almost longer than you can stand.

“Fuck,” you murmur, and his head comes up to look quizzically at you. You swallow. “No. I mean, fuck in a good way.”

He quirks you a little smile. “Oh, good. Though I do hope you’ll tell me if I’m doing something wrong, or if there’s something you’d like me to do that may not have occurred to me, because I’m not actually terribly experienced in this exact… this kind of…”

“You mean you’ve never _done_ this before?” you ask. He must be lying. He must.

He blinks. Blushes the most delicate shade of pink, and licks his lips. “Not for a woman,” he says sort of thoughtfully, but before you can make him clarify, he’s already ducking his head and dipping his tongue into you and licking, licking, _licking_ again, his tongue running over every inch of you as his hands hold your thighs apart.

 _Not for a woman_. A man, then? Men, plural? You picture it; you can’t help it. Your Ben, licking another man’s penis like he’s licking your clit right now. You picture it because it never would have occurred to you, and the thought of it—

The thought of it is just—

“Yes,” you murmur, as his tongue starts to zero in on exactly the perfect spot, swirling, circling. “Fuck, oh fuck, oh yes.”

Without any warning, licking becomes sucking. You bite back a scream as his lips pull at the most sensitive part of you, stretching your nerves in ways that you’ve never felt before. Not with anyone else, not like this, not _ever_.

You realize that you’re whispering his name, “Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben,” in rhythm with his tongue.

“You taste even better than I imagined.” He somehow manages to murmur the words into your skin without interrupting his rhythm at all. The sound vibrates through you, and you arch, your ass clenching as you feel yourself starting to lose control.

He _imagined_ you. Imagined licking you just like this, maybe, as he touched himself and the wolf hid in the kitchen to give him his privacy. Maybe he did it over and over, like you did.

Good.

His hands knead your thighs, and you can see your belly hitching as your breath comes faster, and the sight of his head moving rhythmically between your legs, just the _sight_ of him…!

“Ben,” you whisper, and somehow he knows it’s a command. Still not breaking his rhythm, he looks up and meets your gaze. That was what you wanted. Just that. But maybe he misunderstands, or maybe he just decides to give you more, because there’s suddenly a finger inside you. Just one. It feels like nothing after you’ve just been filled to stretching by his cock, but then he crooks it _just so_ , and without any warning,

with his tongue on your clit and his eyes on your face,

with a moan that comes from every molecule of you, all at once,

your vision fades to white and

you explode.

And Ben keeps licking, sucking, fingering, like he’s trying to draw every last drop of moisture from you so he can drink it all in.

-

_You could make it to town tonight, but you decide to camp instead. Or rather, Ben decides. It’s purely a practical decision; if you went into town, you’d need a hotel room. You don’t have any money (irony of ironies!), and even though he does, he won’t spend it when he has a perfectly good tent in his pack._

_You ask him, as he loads his rifle and prepares to hunt for your dinner, if it’s something more than that. If he thinks getting a hotel with you would cause this relationship to take a turn that he doesn’t want. You ask this plainly, because your time in the storm has left you far too weak for evasion. But he doesn’t answer. He just thins his lips, takes his rifle, and goes._

_Which means the answer is yes. It’s one thing for a cop to pitch a tent with his perp when it’s just a matter of survival. But a hotel room implies luxury, and luxury implies choice, and if he chooses to stay in close quarters with you, well, that would be crossing a line, wouldn’t it?_

_Especially since you know that he’s still planning on turning you in tomorrow._

_As his form fades into the distance, you think about running. You think maybe he’s even expecting you to run, just so he won’t have to blame himself for your escape. But for whatever reason, you don’t. Instead, you wait until he comes back, until he skins the bird he shot and roasts it over the fire he builds, until he feeds you, until the sun grows dimmer. You wait until the chill of evening sets in and you’re inside the tent with him and you’re huddled together just like you’ve been every night for the past week, and instead of running, you simply ask._

_“Ben, will you let me go?”_

_He blinks fast and drops his gaze from yours. He removes one of your gloves and presses a kiss first to your knuckles, then your palm. He doesn’t say anything, but his answer is clear._

_You’re too weary to hate him for it, even though you desperately want to. And you’re too weak to offer yourself to him in exchange for freedom, which is probably for the best, since you’re about ninety-nine percent sure he’d say no. The only thing you can do is kiss him chastely and ask again._

_This time he replies with words. “I can’t.”_

__Won’t _, you think._

_You kiss him again, and eventually you fall asleep in his arms._

_The next day he brings you into town and turns you over to the authorities._

_You’ll spent the next ten years wondering why you didn’t run that night, while he was sleeping. You’ll never really figure it out._

-

“You’ve really never gone down on a woman before?” you ask. He’s beside you now, the two of you crammed together in his tiny twin bed. You’ve already kissed the taste of yourself from his lips.

“No,” he says, sort of shyly.

“Well, you’re damn good at it,” you say. “You just watch a lot of porn or something?” Not that you’ve ever seen a porn video where it’s the woman getting off, not the man. But still.

“No,” he says again. “I just… I grew up reading a lot. My grandparents were librarians. We had a lot of books. All kinds of books.”

That may just be the quaintest thing you’ve ever heard. You laugh. He ducks his head, but after a second he laughs with you.

“Tiny Ben Fraser,” you say, “learning about sex from books. You’re an odd person, you know that?”

“I’ve been told,” he replies. “Many, many times.”

“And you’ll really run away with me?”

He pauses… and then drops his gaze from yours. He lifts your hand, the one that’s resting on his hip, and he presses a kiss first to your knuckles, then your palm. The gesture feels like a memory come to life, and you shiver. Not just at the familiarity of it, but because you know what his answer is.

“Please, Ben,” you say. “I need you.”

He closes his eyes for a long time. When he opens them again, he looks sad. “Can we talk about it tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” you say. “Yeah. Sure.”

Ben falls asleep first, and for a while you just watch him. He looks content, mostly, but after a time you notice something about his brow. It never unfurrows all the way. This is a man who carries worry with him, even into sleep. You wonder where that comes from.

You smooth a finger over his forehead, and he sighs in his sleep, face turning toward yours, a flower seeking the sun. You really do love him, is the thing. More than you’ll ever admit out loud. Something happened between you during that blizzard, something even ten years in prison couldn’t erase.

You drift off for a little while, but it’s hard to sleep for long when you don’t have a yes from him yet. When everything’s still so up in the air. You haven’t cleaned up your prints yet; you don’t know if you’ll have to call in an anonymous tip about his father’s cabin; you don’t know how the diamond deal will play out; you don’t know if Ben really loves you back, or if he just likes to say stuff like that when he’s tied to his bed and about to get laid; most of all, you don’t know how long it’ll take Jolly to track you down.

But there’s no need to worry. Not yet. You have time to figure everything out. Jolly’s a determined little asshole, but he isn’t a smart one. And it’s only been a few days.

You have time.

**Author's Note:**

> A tip of my e-hat to Deputychairman, who made me realize how endlessly important submissive!Fraser is to my life. If you haven't read "In a yellow wood," fix that right now.


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